For a guy who once said out loud he would never enter the family business, Mike Hall gives every impression he loves what he does for a living.

Hall, is the owner/operator of Hall Funeral Home, a Waldoboro-based institution that operates four facilities in the Midcoast between Thomaston and Boothbay Harbor. Talking generally about his business, Hall, 59, of Damariscotta, doesn’t gets into the services he offers or trends in the industry. His conversation keeps coming back to the people involved and the connections he's made with them.

He may meet people at what is one of the most consequential times of their lives, but really his job allows him to meet people where they are and help them get where they need to go.

Born in Rockland and raised in Waldoboro, Hall graduated from Medomak Valley High School in 1984 and went on to obtain his bachelor’s degree from the Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. A skilled high school athlete who still likes to stay active, Hall initially had thoughts of working into the operations side of the Professional Golfers’ Association.

Recognizing the sacrifices required to build that kind of career, Hall switched gears and went into computers instead. A few years later, he recalls sitting in Beltway traffic outside Washington, D.C. when he had an epiphany. He was not really happy with where he was or what he was doing. He called his father up and talked about joining the family business. The Hall family has been in the funeral business ever since Hall's parents, Richard and Cynthia Hall bought an existing business, Flanders Funeral Homes in 1958.

“I was working out of state and working in the computer industry for a little while, and then I came back for, like, a weekend here in Maine,” Mike Hall said. “I kind of looked around like, ‘This is pretty nice here.’ You take it for granted when you grow up here. You really do.”

Not long after he returned to Waldoboro in 1992, he bought the business from his father, Richard Hall. Right around that time, family friend and fellow mortician Sonny Simmons approached the elder Hall offering to sell his funeral home business in Boothbay Harbor.

“My dad was 74 at the time,” Mike Hall said. “He looked at me (and said) ‘It's not going to be me, Mike; it's going to be you if you want to do this. What do you think we should do?’”

Hall thought they should invest, and they did. Not long after that he moved to Boothbay Harbor to operate the business.

“I said, you know, I've got to go down and serve the community and get to know the community,” Hall said “I didn't know a soul in Boothbay Harbor at that time. Now I know most everybody there after 30-plus years.”

He still had his father working in Waldoboro so he had a resource he could lean on as necessary, Hall said, but essentially he was operating his own business and learning on the job. It required him to fill every role and it proved to be invaluable experience

“I was the secretary, the funeral director, the car washer, whatever it took,” he said. “I did all those jobs, which is a good thing. You're leading a company. You’ve got to know all the

parts, how it all comes together. It takes people to do that, good people. So that was a great, great experience.”

The experience worked really well in that while Hall was living in Boothbay he met his future wife Elizabeth. Today the couple works together in the business and they share a daughter, Emma.

Realizing how a more central home base could improve their lives, the Halls sold their Southport home and moved to Damariscotta around 1997.

Today Hall Funeral Home operates locations in Boothbay Harbor, Thomaston, and Waldoboro. In 2021 Hall even opened its own crematory, located just down the street from its Thomaston location on Main Street.

Where the funeral industry once heavily prioritized burials, today many consumers are opting for cremations, green burials, or other alternatives. When he started in the business, funerals were more formal affairs, sometimes with multiple scheduled viewing hours.

Society may have changed, Hall said, but the needs have not. These days people are a little less formal and families tend to be more spread out, but in times of crisis, people still need to come together in some fashion.

“My feeling is the importance of gathering, coming together as family and community, that is still important, and we still do that,” he said. “It's just a different way. It's less formal. You're hearing a lot of celebrations of life or memorials and different types of things, parties and all these different ways that people are doing it.”

Contrary to popular thought, cremations are not the easier option, as there is just as much planning and organization goes into a cremation as traditional funeral, Hall said.

“It's hard when you're talking to someone who's just lost someone, because they're obviously going through a lot,” Hall said. “But I know that it's important to gather and to come together to face our feelings, good, bad, or indifferent.

“How I describe it is it's like closing small chapters of a book. Whatever events you're doing, whether it's the memorial or celebration, the burial, scattering, those are all moments, part of acknowledging our loss, but also part of letting go and hopefully giving us some momentum to move forward in a positive way.”

If there was one word of advice Hall said he could offer people is that it never hurts to plan ahead. He encourages anyone with any curiosity to come in ask questions. Hall said he encourages people to come and discuss their wishes beforehands if only to spare their loved ones from having the decisions about things they never thought about before.

“What you want to do is, ideally, you want to, you want to meld together your family's input and your thoughts, so that way they can honor your wishes but also meet their needs as survivors,” he said.

Hall admitted it took him a couple years to getting around to making his own arrangements but once he was done he was glad they did it.

“When we went through the process, what we learned was it was more involved,” he said. “We realized that you have to think through things and so we worked through it. I remember after doing it that it was almost like this sense of relief. You know, God forbid something happens, but at least we know there's a plan."

A few years ago, Mike, Liz, and Emma Hall, then 24, dispensed with Christmas gifts and booked a cruise together instead. That time together meant more to him than anything else, Mike Hall said.

“We had a wonderful time, just being together,” Mike Hall said. “You don't have to buy me stuff, you know? Let's just do more of this, experiences together, and so that's what we're going do as a family.

“I try to encourage people, this journey that we're on, you know we have to turn the TV off,” Hall said. “Obviously, we can't be naive but, we really do have to tune out that once in a while and just go live our lives (and) make memories. If there's anything this business teaches you, you learn how fragile life is.”

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